Serving a pizza that is most pleasing to the customers is a goal of many restaurants. In serving the best pizza, one that is pleasing to the most customers, the flavor, aroma, aesthetic appeal and other factors are important. To obtain a pizza with pleasing taste, aroma and aesthetic appeal, the oven in which the pizza is cooked and the way the pizza is cooked are important factors
The type of oven used to cook the pizza has a significant impact on the method of cooking and on the final flavor and aesthetic appeal Presently, a large oven that is capable of cooking many pizzas at the same time is used in many restaurants. These ovens have a large mass, metal cooking surface on which the pizzas are placed. The oven is heated with gas or electricity. The large mass, metal cooking surface is designed to provide even heat along its entire surface at all times. The oven is constructed to ensure that the entire oven is a uniform temperature throughout at all times.
One disadvantage of this type of oven is that properly cooking a pizza requires considerable skill. A large pizza requires more cooking time than a small pizza. A deep pan pizza cooks considerably different than regular pizza. A combination pizza, having many ingredients, such as green peppers, anchovies, pineapple, onions, sausage, etc., requires more cooking time than a cheese-only pizza. The baker cooking the pizzas must ensure that each pizza is cooked the proper amount of time such that the pizza is done but is not burned. This job is made more difficult when numerous pizzas of different styles and toppings are placed in the oven at different times so that the baker must monitor each pizza to ensure that it is properly cooked. Considerable skill is required to properly cook a pizza in this type of oven. Further, significant time and effort are required to adequately train a baker to properly cook all types of pizzas. This is a significant disadvantage for this type of oven.
A further disadvantage is the time and cost to operate the oven. The heating of the large oven to the proper temperature requires considerable energy, which is expensive. Heating the oven each day for cooking pizzas must often start several hours before the first pizza is to be placed in the oven. Maintaining the large oven at this temperature is also expensive. This is particularly uneconomical when only a few pizzas are cooked all day or during a slower part of the day, such as from 2:00 p.m. until 5:30 p.m.
A second type of oven used by restaurants to cook pizzas is an oven having a moving conveyor belt. This type of oven has a conveyor belt which continuously moves through the oven at a predetermined speed. The pizzas are placed on this moving belt at a specific location and are taken off the belt as they emerge from the oven. The pizzas are cooked during the time it takes to travel through the oven. The speed of the conveyor belt is set to cook the pizzas a desired amount of time.
A significant disadvantage of the conveyor belt oven is the quality of the cooked pizza. The time taken for a pizza to travel through the oven and the temperature at which it is cooked are the same for each pizza. However, the proper cooking time and temperature for optimum taste is different for each pizza type, whether a large, small, combination or cheese only pizza. While this type of oven requires less operator skill and training then a large mass cooking surface oven, there is a much greater likelihood that pizza baked will be of lower quality. A single oven having several conveyor belts, each moving at a different speed can be manufactured, but there is a practical limit to the number of belts possible and the size and expense becomes prohibitive. The conveyer belt oven also has significant heating time and is expensive to operate.